PARALLEL PROGRAM CITY TERRITORY. ART MADRID'25

VIDEO CYCLE: CARTOGRAPHIES OF PERCEPTION

In its 20th edition, Art Madrid dedicates its Parallel Program to the exploration of the relationship between man, architecture, city and landscape. Under the title Cartographies of Perception, this section, curated by PROYECTOR's Moving Image platform, presents a selection of international video art works that address these interactions from a contemporary and critical perspective. PROYECTOR, a reference platform for the moving image, invites us to participate in an experience in which time, space and perception converge on the screen.

The collection presented this year proposes a reflection on the relationship between man and his environment, on the boundaries between the real and the imaginary, and on the tensions between the natural and the constructed. As quoted by the critic John Berger: "Art is a way of seeing, a constant discovery". The selected works are not only vehicles of plastic beauty, but also invitations to discover new ways of observing, questioning, and possessing a representation of the world..

In this conceptual journey, The Divine Way by Ilaria Di Carlo evokes the labyrinthine descent inspired by the Divine Comedy, where the stairs mutate into metaphors of psychological and architectural transit.

Imitación a la vida by Juan Carlos Bracho, on the other hand, uses a monumental mirror to explore the landscape as a reflection and the image as a bottomless pit, questioning our perception of our surroundings.

In the arid desert of the dry lake El Mirage, Lukas Marxt inscribes a spiral with a vehicle in his work Circular Inscription, paying homage to Land Art while questioning the human imprint on the landscape.

Magda Gebhardt's performance Atlas carries the symbolic weight of the world as she constructs and destroys landscapes that defy notions of time and space, exposing the artifice inherent in the image.

The introspective journey of Yuchi Hsiao in Somewhere I Belong to Be uses toy cars moving across her face to symbolize a personal transition, while lololol's Wafer Bearer Deep Rain explores the relationship between technology and everyday life in Taiwan, the epicenter of global semiconductor production.

Finally, Breaking News: The Flooding of the Louvre by Tezi Gabunia offers a disturbing vision of the flooded museum, anticipating the impact of climate change on cultural heritage.

Each work in this selection offers poetic and philosophical views of life and invites collectors to own a piece of this conceptual journey. By acquiring these works, they become custodians of stories and visions that reflect and challenge our understanding of the contemporary world.

ABOUT THE ARTWORKS AND ARTISTS

The Divine Way. Ilaria Di Carlo. 15:00. 2018. 2K color.

The Divine Way. 15:00. 2018. 2K color

The Divine Way, inspired by Dante's Divine Comedy, accompanies the protagonist on a labyrinthine descent through an endless series of staircases. Each step reveals an architectural and psychological mutation, transforming the landscape into a visual and emotional trap. Winner of dozens of international awards, this work is a monumental journey into the unknown.

Ilaria Di Carlo. Courtesy of the artist.

llaria Di Carlo

Ilaria Di Carlo (Lazio, 1981) is a visual artist whose practice combines film, scenography, installation and performing arts. Trained at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome and with a master's degree in scenography from Central Saint Martin's College in London, she also studied digital film production in Berlin. His work explores travel, identity and their relationship to landscape and architecture, using a visual aesthetic inspired by scenography. His short films have been awarded and exhibited internationally, including his outstanding work The Divine Way. Based in Berlin, she continues to work as a set designer, director and actress in experimental theater projects.

Breaking News: The Flooding of the Louvre. Tezi Gabunia. 3:02. 2018-20. 2K color.

Breaking News: The Flooding of the Louvre. 3:02. 2018-20. 2K color

The flooding of the Louvre Museum speaks about news culture and our fluctuating perception of disasters as seen through the media. The scale of the disaster is often difficult to assess from news coverage. In the work “Breaking News”, the flood slowly enters the room of the Louvre, allowing the viewer to gradually witness the destruction of the interior. It brings the viewer shockingly close to what has not happened but easily could have; the viewer sees the before-and-after effect in a highly visualized manner, which is as convincing and threatening as it is fake. The artwork presents a scoop—a situation where information, as a spectacle, surpasses the terrifying nature of catastrophe and where the real event is abolished. Is information a new type of reality? Is it possible to truly cover real events? These issues arise during the encounter between two situations: the destruction of art artifacts and the spectacular nature of this process.

Tezi Gabunia. Foto de Giorgi Nakashidze. Courtesy of the artist.

Tezi Gabunia

Tezi Gabunia (Tbilisi, 1987) is an artist and architect who graduated from Tbilisi University and is known for her systematic approach to exploring cultural manipulation through various media. Winner of the 2016 Tsinandali Visual Arts Award for her project Put your Head into Gallery, her work has been exhibited internationally in cities such as Batumi, Vienna, Krakow, and New York. Highlights include participation in the Story as a Woven Carpet collective in Berlin and presentation in the Focus section of the 2020 Armory Show.

Circular inscription. Lukas Marxt. 6:50. 2016. 2K color.

Circular Inscription. 6:50. 2016. 2K color

In the desert landscape of dry lake El Mirage, a car circles incessantly, leaving indelible marks on the surface. The work is both an homage to 1960s Land Art and a reflection on human intervention in the landscape. The marks on the ground evoke works such as Smithson's Spiral Jetty, translating the monumentality of the land into the space of video art.

Lukas Marxt. Courtesy of the artist.

Lukas Marxt

Lukas Marxt (Austria, 1983) is an artist and filmmaker who explores the interaction between human and geological existence as well as the impact of humans on nature. Trained in geography and environmental sciences, he completed his audiovisual studies in Linz and holds a master's degree in fine arts from the University of Cologne. His work, which has been exhibited in museums such as the Torrance Art Museum and the Biennale of Painting in Belgium, combines visual art and film. His films have been screened at festivals such as the Berlinale, Locarno and Gijón, where he was awarded the Principality of Asturias Prize. Since 2017, he has been researching the ecological dynamics of the Salton Sea in California.

Imitation of Life. Juan Carlos Bracho. 20:46 2017 HD color.

Imitation of Life. Juan Carlos Bracho. 20:46 2017 HD color.

A large-format mirror and the act of erasing its surface become a performative meditation on image, landscape, and perception. Bracho confronts the viewer with the illusory nature of images, questioning whether we are critical thinkers or merely hypnotized consumers. This single-shot narrative reveals a world where the image transforms into a plastic and mutable entity.

Juan Carlos Bracho. Courtesy of the artist.

Juan Carlos Bracho

Juan Carlos Bracho (Cádiz, 1970) explores space, drawing as a cartographic tool, and the circularity of contemporary creativity. His work is based on small, repetitive gestures that generate powerful sensory images, transforming apparent monotony into evocative scenographies. Through systematic actions and minimal graphic elements, he reflects on the consolidation of images, landscape as symbolic transformation, and aesthetic experience as catharsis. His practice encompasses video, photography, installation, performance, sculpture, and drawing, with projects that continuously interact, creating a narrative of parallel mirrors and infinite escapes.

Atlas. Magda Gebhardt. 6:12. 2012. HD B/N.

Atlas. 6:12. 2012. HD B/N

Like the mythological Titan, Gebhardt bears the weight of the world in a continuous process of creating and destroying landscapes. The performance redefines notions of time and space, exposes the artifice of both landscape and image, and positions the viewer as the central axis from which perception is structured.

Magda Gebhardt. Courtesy of the artist.

Magda Gebhardt

Magda Gebhardt (Porto Alegre, 1981). She graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts (ENSBA) in Lyon. She is a painter and professor at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure D'architecture in Paris-Malaquais, where she currently lives and works.

Wafer Bearer Deep Rain.lololol (Xia Lin y Sheryl Cheung). 12:00. 2022. 4K color.

Wafer Bearer Deep Rain. 12:00. 2022. 4K color

Exploring the interaction between technology and everyday life, this work analyzes the natural and industrial phenomena of Taiwan as the epicenter of global semiconductor production. Through a multi-narrative video, it establishes a poetic and critical relationship between technical objects and human beings.

lololol (Xia Lin y Sheryl Cheung). Courtesy of the artists.

lololol (Xia Lin y Sheryl Cheung)

Founded in 2013 by Xia Lin and Sheryl Cheung, lolololol is a Taiwanese art collective that explores how emotions and body politics are shaped by technological cultures, martial arts, and ontological materialism. Their approach combines Asian philosophy and mind-body practices as alternative ways of investigating the interaction between humans and technology. In 2020 they founded Future Tao, an artistic platform for collective collaborations. Their projects have been presented at prestigious festivals and museums such as Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival (UK), Taipei Arts Festival, Times Museum (China) and Liquid Architecture (Australia).

Somewhere I belong to be.Yuchi Hsiao. 3:31. 2017.

Somewhere I belong to be. 3:31. 2017

This work explores emotional release through a slow, symbolic gesture. A toy car runs across the artist's face as his hands reach out of the frame, reflecting the act of letting go of what is holding him back. The tension between retention and transformation is materialised in the subtle tugging of the car on his hair. The action becomes a visual metaphor for letting go of the past and embarking on a new path.

Yuchi Hsiao. Courtesy of the artist.

Yuchi Hsiao

Yuchi Hsiao (Kaohsiung, 1986) is an artist specialising in video art and installation, with a Master's degree in New Media Art from the National Taipei University of the Arts. Her work explores the relationship between the individual and her environment, focusing on the unusual events of everyday life and projecting intimate emotions from personal spaces such as her bedroom. Hsiao combines textiles and second-hand clothing with video works to expand reflections on the mind and everyday life. His work has been exhibited internationally in France, Bulgaria, Macau and at the Nakanojo Biennale in Japan.

The Video Cycle Cartographies of Perception will be shown in the Espacio Tectónica (stand D2) during the week of the fair. The cycle, curated by PROYECTOR's Moving Image platform, deals with migration and the relationship between peripheries and urban centres, examining the city as a complex organism, at once a labyrinth and a Tower of Babel. Through video, the artists reflect on the role of the individual in the transformation of architectural space and the dynamics of feedback in an interconnected world, inviting viewers to expand their perception of the spaces they inhabit. In this dialogue between image and territory, Cartographies of Perception maps other fragmented realities and opens up a space for questioning and critical sensitivity, where the gaze becomes the first step towards a new understanding of our surroundings.

The practice of the collective DIMASLA (Diana + Álvaro) is situated at a fertile intersection between contemporary art, ecological thinking, and a philosophy of experience that shifts the emphasis from production to attention. Faced with the visual and material acceleration of the present, their work does not propose a head-on opposition, but rather a sensitive reconciliation with time, understood as lived duration rather than as a measure. The work thus emerges as an exercise in slowing down, a pedagogy of perception where contemplating and listening become modes of knowledge.

In the work of DIMASLA (Diana + Álvaro), the territory does not function as a framework but rather as an agent. The landscape actively participates in the process, establishing a dialogical relationship reminiscent of certain eco-critical currents, in which subjectivity is decentralized and recognized as part of a broader framework. This openness implies an ethic of exposure, which is defined as the act of exposing oneself to the climate, the elements, and the unpredictable, and this means accepting vulnerability as an epistemological condition.

The materials—fabrics, pigments, and footprints—serve as surfaces for temporary inscriptions and memories, bearing the marks of time. The initial planning is conceived as an open hypothesis, allowing chance and error to act as productive forces. In this way, the artistic practice of DIMASLA (Diana + Álvaro) articulates a poetics of care and being-with, where creating is, above all, a profound way of feeling and understanding nature.

In a historical moment marked by speed and the overproduction of images, your work seems to champion slowness and listening as forms of resistance. Could it be said that your practice proposes a way of relearning time through aesthetic experience?

Diana: Yes, but more than resistance or vindication, I would speak of reconciliation—of love. It may appear slow, but it is deliberation; it is reflection. Filling time with contemplation or listening is a way of feeling. Aesthetic experience leads us along a path of reflection on what lies outside us and what lies within.

The territory does not appear in your work as a backdrop or a setting, but as an interlocutor. How do you negotiate that conversation between the artist’s will and the voice of the place, when the landscape itself participates in the creative process?

Álvaro: For us, the landscape is like a life partner or a close friend, and naturally this intimate relationship extends into our practice. We go to visit it, to be with it, to co-create together. We engage in a dialogue that goes beyond aesthetics—conversations filled with action, contemplation, understanding, and respect.

Ultimately, in a way, the landscape expresses itself through the material. We respect all the questions it poses, while at the same time valuing what unsettles us, what shapes us, and what stimulates us within this relationship.

The Conquest of the Rabbits I & II. 2021. Process.

In your approach, one senses an ethic of exposure: exposing oneself to the environment, to the weather, to others, to the unpredictable. To what extent is this vulnerability also a form of knowledge?

Diana: For us, this vulnerability teaches us a great deal—above all, humility. When we are out there and feel the cold, the rain, or the sun, we become aware of how small and insignificant we are in comparison to the grandeur and power of nature.

So yes, we understand vulnerability as a profound source of knowledge—one that helps us, among many other things, to let go of our ego and to understand that we are only a small part of a far more complex web.

Sometimes mountains cry too. 2021. Limestone rockfall, sun, rain, wind, pine resin on acrylic on natural cotton canvas, exposed on a blanket of esparto grass and limestone for two months.. 195 cm x 130 cm x 3 cm.

Your works often emerge from prolonged processes of exposure to the environment. Could it be said that the material—the fabrics, the pigments, the traces of the environment—acts as a memory that time writes on you as much as you write on it?

Álvaro: This is a topic for a long conversation, sitting on a rock—it would be very stimulating. But if experiences shape people’s inner lives and define who we are in the present moment, then I would say yes, especially in that sense.

Leaving our comfort zone has led us to learn from the perseverance of plants and the geological calm of mountains. Through this process, we have reconciled ourselves with time, with the environment, with nature, with ourselves, and even with our own practice. Just as fabrics hold the memory of a place, we have relearned how to pay attention and how to understand. Ultimately, it is a way of deepening our capacity to feel.

The fox and his tricks. 2022. Detail.

To what extent do you plan your work, and how much space do you leave for the unexpected—or even for mistakes?

Diana: Our planning is limited to an initial hypothesis. We choose the materials, colours, places, and sometimes even the specific location, but we leave as much room as possible for the unexpected to occur. In the end, that is what it is really about: allowing nature to speak and life to unfold. For us, both the unexpected and mistakes are part of the world’s complexity, and within that complexity we find a form of natural beauty.